Irrational Games Reaches for the Sky in Bioshock: Infinite

Defenestration has never looked so gorgeous. The debut teaser starts out underwater, from the view of the game?s main protagonist, Agent DeWitt. However, the illusion of an underwater setting is quickly wisped away as a huge mechanical golem (a reimagined Big Daddy) pulls him from an aquarium tank. Moments before the main character gets thrown out of the window, he catches a glimpse of the golem?s still-beating heart inside a jar in its chest. Before plummeting towards the ground, we get a slow motion view of Columbia, the new sky based city, and it looks amazing.

A nice snapshot of Columbia.

From there the trailer offers more and more eye candy in a style that only Bioshock can provide. The new city is vibrant and colorful, much more so than Rapture?s dull art-deco style. In typical, Bioshock fashion, the city is alive with propaganda that takes ideals to the extreme, in this case American Exceptionalism. The government seems preoccupied with racial purification, as shown by the propaganda poster that reads, "We must all be vigilant to ensure the purity of our people.? The new game is set in 1912, before the events of Bioshock 1 and 2, so we may catch a glimpse as to how Rapture was created. It was learned in the original games that plasmids were derived from sea slugs, so powers are to be acquired through other means, such as breaking statues. One power allows the player to direct a murder of crows at an enemy to dispatch them.

The story revolves around Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, who is hired to rescue a mysterious girl named Elizabeth from the cloud city. Once he arrives, he finds that she is integral to the conflict surrounding the city and must work with her in order for them to both escape. It has not been confirmed whether or not Infinite will take place in the same universe as the first two games. Infinite has been given a release window of 2012.